BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Mo Elleithee, executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service at the McCourt School and a Fox News contributor

How/where are you celebrating your birthday and with whom? “I’ve never really been much of a birthday person, but my wife and kids always seem to find a fun way to force me to celebrate it with them.”

How did you get your start in politics? “I was politically interested in high school, but it wasn’t until I was a student at Georgetown during Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign that I became politically inspired. But I still didn’t think of it as a career. Then, right out of college, I took a job as a paralegal at a Wall Street law firm while waiting to take the Foreign Service exam. I hated every single minute of it. After one particularly terrible day at the office, I came home, popped open a beer, made a sandwich and turned on the TV. It was Election Day 1994, and I watched as my party got decimated. When I saw political heroes of mine like Mario Cuomo and Ann Richards lose, I said to myself, ‘This is what I need to do with my life.’ Six weeks later I was back in DC, enrolled in the political management master’s program at GW, and on my way to my first campaign job in 1996.”

What is a trend going on in the U.S. or abroad that doesn’t get enough attention? “Fundamental democratic norms are being questioned in ways that would have been hard to imagine a few decades ago. Significant numbers of Americans believe stopping hate speech is more important than protecting free speech; question capitalism as the basis of our economy; question the role of the judiciary and the press, and even our fundamental system of voting. How these questions get litigated could have profound impact on the next chapter of the American experiment.”

How is the Trump presidency going? “If you want to disrupt every major American institution, then it’s going great. If you believe these institutions are critical to our democracy, then it’s a disaster. Personally, I believe that we have allowed too many fissures (ideological, geographic, racial, gender, class) to define our social and political interactions. The President has decided that widening those fissures is better for him politically than trying to heal them. As he long as he keeps doing that, this will be a toxic presidency.”

What’s a fun fact that people in Washington might not know about you? “My dream is to open a karaoke bar in the Florida Keys when I grow up.”